Pakistan’s transgender community has long lived on society’s margins, harassed by police, ridiculed as freaks, pitied as the outcast people of Allah and often rejected by their own families. Now the Supreme Court is giving them hope through a petition for their rights to be respected.

India is busily conducting its 15th national census, with millions of government workers deploying across the country to tally its estimated 1.17 billion people and ask questions on housing, work and education that should give a clearer picture of the world’s most populous democracy and its vast needs.